There is a curious relationship between the quality of a film and its ability to remain in one's consciousness. Many decent and quite well-made films slide from memory almost as soon as they're over. But sometimes, a story is so striking that it stakes out territory in our minds, with images and sounds that crop up unbidden as we go about our daily lives.
The documentary which has had the most staying power is Darwin's Nightmare, a film about the social, economic, and ecological implications of the Nile Perch on the inhabitants of Lake Victoria region of Tanzania. It was a difficult film to watch not just because of the horrors on display, but because its largely composed of stitched-together interviews which meander, trail off, and seem to go nowhere. But several years after I saw it, it still often comes to mind whenever I think about poverty and economic development.
The film is full of arresting images - among them fish carcasses rotting in the sun - but the most memorable ones are of the Tanzanians themselves, nearly all of whom depend either directly or indirectly on the Nile Perch. They have the most penetrating eyes I've ever seen, with an intensity I doubt any method actor has ever matched.
Raphael (pictured above), a watchman at the marine biology research center whose image accompanied many promotions for the film, pierces the camera with his eyes as he nonchalantly reveals that the previous night watchman was murdered. Eliza, a stunningly beautiful woman who earns a living entertaining the foreign pilots who transport the Perch, acts as the emotional heart of the film. Early on in the film, she is captivating as she sings a song about Tanzania, even while being harassed by one of the Russian pilots. Later, we see her at night in her flat as she discusses her life and her dreams of saving money, getting an education, and getting a job in computers. Her eyes speak to a life of incredible hardship, yet they radiate warmth and intelligence and hope that things can get better.
Watching Eliza tell her story, I couldn't help but compare her to the relative poor in the United States. I've written before about my criticisms of focusing on relative poverty in this country, and Eliza illustrates why I feel that the absolute poor, who are mostly abroad, deserve a lot more of our attention. In the recent subprime crisis, the humanitarian focus has been on the hardships visited on people who lose their homes and are forced to declare bankruptcy. I often hear people describe their distress as not being able to give their kids the same clothes and toys as other children. But can we reasonably compare these hardships to the hardships of the orphans in Tanzania who sniff plastic fumes to dull the pain of sleeping on the streets (frequently suffering rape and abuse)? Even Eliza is better-off than those children, but selling her body to obnoxious foreigners is her only hope at escaping the crushing poverty cycle of the Perch industry. Of course, I don't know what Eliza would have done if she was able to attend community college in American earning, say $20,000 a year at a low-end service job, but anecdotally, most people with her kind of will to survive and succeed do - if they just had a chance. In contrast, how many American kids fail to take full advantage of the wealth of opportunities we have compared to Eliza?
It seems an injustice to people like Eliza to complain about how hard life is in this country when there is so much we should be grateful for. The people who have lost their homes in America may think they are at a dead end, that they have no way to achieve comfort and self-sufficiency, but they do. We all do, and hopefully there will be more films to remind us of how lucky we are.
If you haven't yet seen Darwin's Nightmare, I highly recommend it. It will probably not be what you expect, and you will probably remember it far longer than you think you will. And when you learn what ultimately happens to Eliza, you might feel like you've been hit by a bowling ball to the stomach.
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